1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image control apparatuses and image control methods, and, in detail, relates to an image control apparatus and an image control method for performing image reproduction and display in a camera, a personal computer, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
A recent image device such as a digital camera, an image viewer, a personal computer, and the like comes to have a large capacity of memory. Accordingly, a large amount of images needs to be stored and managed in a single device, and therefore an image search function for searching an object image from among the large amount of images attracts attention as an important technique.
As a conventional search method, it is generally known to display corresponding thumbnail images in a lump for each photographing date or for each folder. However, this method is not sufficient for the search of a large amount of images, and therefore various kinds of search method are proposed such as a method of performing the search by the content of a photographed object image.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2007-226536 (published on Sep. 6, 2007) discloses an image search apparatus which searches and displays like images of a specific image according to a composition, the number of persons, a hue distribution, an object person, or the like. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-41155 (published on Feb. 21, 2008) discloses a display control apparatus which displays for selection a content searched corresponding to a search condition by arranging tabs each indicating the search condition for detecting the content in the horizontal direction of a screen and by disposing an icon searched under the condition of each of the tabs vertically under the tab.